The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette

lighter.
    “Well, he seems like a nice boy, dear,” she said.
    “Stop it. He’s thirty-four.”
    “I can’t wait to tell your father his little girl is working for The Man and being courted by a boy in his thirties. He’ll be thrilled.”
    Annie held up a throw pillow as a threat. “You are not allowed to tease me about this.”
    “Oh, come on, this is the only fun I get.”
    “Did you eat today?”
    “I did. Twice.”
    “Liar.”
    “All right once, but it was a big meal.”
    Annie put down the pillow and threw herself on the couch.
    “You have to eat , mother.”
    “Yes, I know, I know.”
    “Oh, and don’t worry, I made sure nobody’s going to say anything about the… you know.”
    “The dope? Honestly, who cares any more?”
    “Some people do! The army does, I bet.”
    “I grow my own plants in my own yard for use in my own house. Let them come. I’ll call the ACLU.”
    “Hippie.”
    “You are correct. I am too young to be one, but you are still correct. Now, I believe North by Northwest is already in the machine. Will you be joining your mother for a Hitchcock, or would you prefer hiding in your room and writing Eddie Loves Annie on all your notebooks?”
    “I swear to God, I will hit you with this pillow, lit joint or no.”
    “Ah, such violence. Find me the TV remote, would you?”
    Annie started rummaging through the nearest collection of afghans, as this was the most obvious place to check. As she did, a thought occurred.
    “Hey, mom, silly question: did we ever watch Porgy and Bess? ”
    “That’s Gershwin, right? I don’t think so. If we did, it would have been a network airing. I’m sure we don’t own that. Why, did you want to?”
    “No. I was just curious.”

7
    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
    D obbs hated using the bathroom in the camper.
    It was a funny problem for a man who lived in a camper to have, but it was true. He’d been away from real plumbing for a long time and was growing to despise a lot of things about that fact, including the chem smell, the size of the john, and most especially the part where it had to be emptied regularly.
    He had no decent solution to the problem aside from hoping the city would install public bathrooms in the field. (He had petitioned them to do exactly that, and received nothing for his efforts. Not even a port-a-john.) All he could control was the frequency in which the toilet needed emptying, and even then he had only so much say. He could make fewer contributions, certainly, which might cut down on the number of times Art asked him to change it, but it wouldn’t eliminate the part where Dobbs did the changing.
    Art asked him to do it every time. There were other things Dobbs had to do—or rather “had to” do, with air quote scare quotes—presumably to offset the expense of giving him a place to stay while awaiting the inevitable, and he didn’t much mind those other things. But the toilet?
    That was why, whenever he could, Dobbs went for a walk instead.
    Behind the campers was an open field, but at the far end of that field was a collection of freestanding trees, a forward thrust first wave of vegetation with a larger column of forest bringing up the rear. A vanguard of nature’s toilet, located only about a quarter of a mile away.
----
    L earning how to dump in the woods—without either getting bitten by nature or coming into contact with something that caused a rash—was never on Dobbs’ list of life goals.
    He grew up in Minnesota. Not particularly athletic, he ended up in a common enough geeky-smart-socially-awkward niche that steered most young men in the direction of comic books and RPG’s, but which took him on a side path to UFO fandom.
    A child looking up at the night sky hoping to see strange lights will inevitably see strange lights, especially when one’s definition of unidentified is fluid and poorly informed by astronomical and aeronautical minutia. Most of his preteen years up until his extremely belated